I've been developing a Macintosh application, FractalWorks, to generate and display fractals. Right now it creates Mandelbrot and Julia sets.

It has a flexible scheme for defining the colors used to display fractals, and allows you to anmiate color changes on-screen.

You can create plots with as many as 65535 different color values, one for each possible iteration in a set.

Each FractalWorks document can use its own "Color scheme," or color definition file, or share a color scheme with another document. Document windows that share a color scheme will display changes to their shared colors in real time.

The application is a universal binary, and requires OS X version 10.4.

If you are interested in trying out the current version, post a message here and I will email it to you. I'm not ready yet to post the program to a public forum.

The current version is a fully featured version that expires after 30 days.


Duncan C

Mr. Lee,

I double-posted this message without really meaning to, so I guess I'll double-post my reply as well. My aplogies to those who have seen the thread in both places.

My goal for now with the expiration date is to control distribution of the program since it's still in development. I don't want versions spreading around the net uncontrolled. I may eventually decide to sell it, and I want early versions to expire.
For now, I've hard-coded an exiration date into the program. I haven't packaged it into an installer yet, and most schemes that have an expiration date based on the date of installation are pretty easy to hack. The hard-coded date is harder. If you get interested in the program I could make a new version for you with a longer lifetime.
The program right now is just a zip archive.  It takes a bit less than 600k once you decompress it. The zipped file is around 200k. That size includes the release notes and readme files, as well as several sample (empty) plot files and a few sample color scheme definition files. The plot files are saved without the plot data - they are just the parameters that let you generate the plots on your computer. That way the files are tiny.
Duncan C

Thumbs up.  I like the color editor.  No bugs encountered.

It took some figuring out, but I thought I had the general idea.  It'll be a head-scratcher for many users, but I like it enough that I'm reluctant to suggest you overhaul it.